Europe is Burning – 2010

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koa1B1ls2hg&feature=player_embedded] Neoliberal economics blew up the US economy, then went on to ruin the economies of the nations of Europe. Senseless austerity measures were implemented across the board on the backs of the people in order to cover the ultra-rich who made bad bets on banks and whatnot. Riots spread across the continent – Greece, Italy, France and the UK. This video shows just how violent these proletarian, populist riots against the rich and the corporations were. It’s interesting that our media has blacked out most footage of these riots because it is their criminal corporate oligarchical class that is being targeted.

Freemarketeers Get Ready to Murder Ireland Again

Rich Broderick lays out the case. 160 years ago, classical economics, the ancestor of the neoliberalism and freemarket fundamentalism that currently rules the globe, deliberately murdered 2 It was a genocide as brutal and Pol Pot’s and nearly as brutal as Hitler’s Holocaust. But it was done in the name of economic theory, a theory which today rules the world, which makes it particularly tragicomic. Ireland was destroyed and 1/4 of its population was murdered, Pol Pot like, in the name of ideology. Free market ideology, to be precise. Here it is, 160 years later, and the classical economists yet live. Classical economics, instead of being a peculiar aberration of Europeans, now sits astride the globe, having conquered the world in its name. Ireland will be destroyed once again by the rich, just as the rich destroyed it 160 years ago. Few people will die, but Ireland will be ruined just the same. Here is what happened. Ireland subscribed to neoclassical economics, the economics that says that you must lower taxes to the bone on the rich and corporations and take a completely hands off approach to regulation of business. In this case, Ireland allowed a totally unregulated Wild West of the Banks. Wealthy bondholders on the Continent apparently made bets with bonds on these hazy banks, and then the banks went south, and anyone with any sense could have predicted. Logic would say that rich bondholders in Paris and Berlin made a bad bet on Irish banks, and as happens when you make a bad bet at the casino, they lost and need to eat their losses like everyone else. The best thing the Irish could do is to do an Argentina and simply default on their debt. It would be bad for a little while, but Argentina was growing again within 6 months. They should leave the ridiculous EU along with Greece, Spain, Portugal and any other European country with any sense. The sooner the EU dies, the better. Instead, the rich bondholders on the continent will be paid off for the bad debts. Imagine if you got t to go the casino all you wanted to. You got to keep all your winnings, and every time you lost, the local poor and working people would be reduced to penury to pay you for your losses. Paradise! This is the scam that the rich and corporations of the world, especially parasitic finance capital, are running on all the rest of us. They need to be congratulated. Good scam, good scam! It’s increasingly a war of the top Who’s side are you on? Do you make less than $250,000/yr.? Then you are in the bottom 9 Whose side are you on? Are you fighting for the interests of your class in the class war or are you fighting for the enemy against yourself and your own like a fool?

Austerity = Economic Destruction

Neoclassical economics is senseless. It’s the philosophy of the rentier classes who have been waging war on the Enlightenment for 300 years now. If you’re down with neoclassical economics, Libertarianism, austerity, balanced budgets and whatnot, you’re in bed for the forces of the Counter-Enlightenment beginning with Smith and Ricardo 200 years ago. Recall that these are the folks who consider themselves the “natural rulers of mankind.” The Enlightenment was a move towards democracy and popular rule, and the rentier class has been furious ever since. What do the rich want? The rich do not just want to pay few to no taxes. This is a falsehood. They want much more than that. In my opinion, the rich actually want to be paid tribute! Notice that the war on Obama really picked up when he said some nasty things about rich people? That’s when the media war on him really opened up. It’s to be expected, as all of the media is owned by the rich. They don’t take kindly to insults. They’re still furious over the gunning down of the Romanovs 90 years ago. This was an insult that must be paid back in spades for as long as memory allows. Want to fix the economy? The change needs to come from the private sector, not government. And if the private sector is frozen up and the banks are not making loans so the private credit market is dead, what then? When the private sector is saving and not spending, there is a lack of demand and the private credit market is dead, then the state must step in. There’s a lack of money in the private sector, so the state must rectify that unbalance with deficit spending, stimulus, etc, in order to keep the economy moving, lower the rate of unemployment, take care of the currently unemployed, create jobs, etc. This deficit spending and stimulus must continue for as long as the private credit market is frozen and dead in the water. Neoclassical economics is a joke. Neoclassical economics is what created the financial disaster that blew up the US economy, took down much of the world economy with it, and left us in the mess we are in. Neoclassicals would have us engage in mass deficit cuts in the middle of a downturn. This is not economic salvation; it’s economic destruction. Look at the lesson from Ireland: Ireland began cutting back deficit spending in 2008, when its banking crisis began to spread and its budget deficit as a percentage of GDP was 7.3 per cent. The economy promptly contracted by 10 per cent and, surprise, surprise, the deficit exploded to 14.3 per cent of GDP. This is what will happen in every country that engages in deficit reduction austerity. The more you cut the deficit, the more it grows! Latvia is the poster child for the neoclassicals. They want all of Europe, especially Greece, to follow the wonderful example of Latvia. Latvia undertook massive deficit reduction austerity cuts and the economy contracted a full 2 This stuff isn’t even economics, or rather, it’s bad economics. More accurate, it’s politically driven economics. What’s the game here. Apparently a project by the rentier classes (neoclassical economics is the economics of the rentier classes) to roll back 300 years of the Enlightenment. The lie is that the austerity is supposed to be produce “confidence” in the private sector. This is nonsense. Instead the agenda is political. To roll back social security, pensions, health, education and other spending on human needs, and especially to increase unemployment so much that it drives down the wages – the Latvian central banker was explicit on this. This is a logic of self-destruction. Austerity will lead to depressions, decreasing tax revenue and actually paradoxically increasing deficits. In Latvia, it has resulted in mass brain drain and capital flight as skilled workers and capital have fled the nation. Clearly, the European nations are not pursuing the interests of the majority of citizens nor even of their industry. This again contradicts an essential axiom of neoclassical economics – that humans will always act in their own self-interest. What logic is there in the philosophy of economic destruction? The reason is that neither politicians nor citizens are calling the shots anymore. Instead, as in the US, the bankers are. It’s as if we have an International Dictatorship of Bankers. Finance capital has gotten itself into a horrible mess by their own devices. In order to keep their game going, they operate the economy to benefit the banks instead of the logical alternative, running the banks to benefit the economy. So the austerity measures are to rescue the financial sector. The only way to rescue the financial sector is through hammering social security, health care, education and workers and also selling off government property via privatization. The financial sector needs huge bailouts from the state to deal with the mountains of toxic assets that they are loaded up with. The state can’t loan the money. So the bad debts of the bankers must be passed on to workers and industry. This will be hard to sell to people, so the bankers sell it to us by saying that our poverty today will result in our prosperity tomorrow. Lots of people are buying it, as you can see in the comments section. For 50 years now, the IMF has been imposing austerity plans on 3rd World countries. The results are dismal. It’s not a road to prosperity at all. It’s been 50 years of failure of the worst kind. It hasn’t benefited those countries one bit. Who has it benefited? Who knows? The 1st World, who bought up public assets in those nations for 10 cents on the dollar? If it didn’t work in the 3rd World, it won’t work here. 50 years of failure is enough evidence. What more do you need?

Deficit Reduction

Erranter, a fiscal conservative, is in the comments attempting to justify the deficit reduction going on in the developed world:

But either way the fear of defaulting on debt is one of the main reasons for cuts, if not the reason. I think the UK is alright, mainly for historical reasons, along with Japan and the US, even if they went over 100 percent, but “newer” economies such as Spain and Greece don’t have as much credit history to back themselves up and are therefore making the cuts to show that they’re serious about fiscal stability. 

Japan’s is one of the highest on Earth – it is ~21 Erranter is right though. It’s the investors and bond markets who are calling the show here. The governments are making the cuts because they are afraid that if they do not, they will get hit by the investors via the bond markets. It’s not justifiable in the US or UK, it hasn’t happened in Japan, but I can’t speak of elsewhere. Shall I point out what is going on here? The international investor class (the internationalist rich who are the enemies of every poor and middle class person on Earth) are ordering national governments around and telling them what to do. National sovereignty is gone. Nations no longer even rule themselves. They are ruled by the international elite rich who pursue their own interests. So really what we have now is an International Dictatorship of the Rich, and all of world’s nations live under this dictatorship as subjects. Apparently the dictatorship has told many world governments that social democracy is unsustainable and therefore needs to go. Not surprising, as they’ve always hated it anyway. And apparently governments are starting to obey. The rich, the world media and the elites could not be happier. They have hated social democracy since the day it was born and have spent the last century plotting ways to destroy it. Now maybe they found one. What this points out, I think, is that capitalism sucks! I’ve been saying this over and over on this site, but few seem to listen to me. The World Capitalist Class has told the nations of the world that social democracy has to go. It’s actually blackmail. If you don’t get rid of it, we will cut off your loans and investment and drive you to the poorhouse. So we can have one or the other, capitalism or social democracy, but not both. I don’t want to live in a world like that, and I don’t want to live under a capitalist regime like that. Fuck it. I’m outa here. Try something else.

Rightwing Agenda in the UK Makes No Sense

The party in power in the UK right now is called the Condems. It’s a cross between the Conservatives or Tories and the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems have the support of about 1 The Tories ran on a platform renouncing the extremely unpopular policy of  Thatcherism. Note that Thatcher was not able to push through much of her agenda. The wildest thing she tried to do was the poll tax, basically a regressive tax on the poor and working class, and the protests against that nearly caused a street revolution in the country. She’s probably the most hated British politician of the past 100 years, although she does have some supporters. I’ve always felt she had more supporters among conservatives here in the US than she did in the UK. Since the end of Thatcher, the Tories have been backtracking on Thatcherism and saying that they want to moderate their line. The Lib Dems are some of kind new age, pro-environment, pro-gay rights, SWPL type party that’s also more to the Right of Labor on economic stuff, though not nearly as much as the Tories. Their main claim to fame was opposition to the war in Iraq. Their supporters are these hip yuppie types who make good money but don’t want to be associated with Tory assholiness. The Lib Dems basically hate the Tories, so this is a marriage made in Hell. Nevertheless, they are going along with the worst cuts to the British welfare state that the UK has ever seen. I’m not sure what the rationale is for these devastating spending cuts in the middle of an economic downturn. Maybe someone more versed in British politics can enlighten me. Spending cuts in the middle of a downturn is always a bad idea. All it does is make the downturn worse, and far from reducing the deficit, it often grows the deficit because the spending cuts harm the economy so much that tax revenues crash. Hence what we have seen in Ireland and Greece, the idiot countries who have tried to cut their way out of a deficit problems. Both countries made devastating cuts to their budgets, but the more they cut, the more the deficit grew! This is because, as I noted, the spending cuts wreck the economy, causing tax revenues to collapse, paradoxically worsening the deficit! Anyway, for whatever crazy reason they have cooked up, the Condems are determined to go ahead with these cuts. But their rationale for doing them is truly insane. According to the Condems, by making massive cuts British state spending, they will somehow stimulate the private sector, and hence begin to grow their way out of the downturn. I’m not aware of any valid economic theory on Earth in which huge cuts to the state “stimulates the private sector.” Why would it? Unless it’s some whack Libertarian theory that doesn’t even make sense on paper. Anyway, that’s the official rationale. As I noted, it makes no sense at all. Hence, it’s a lie. Thence, we wonder why they are cutting government. They must be cutting the state for some sort of ideological reasons, or perhaps they have a deficit reduction agenda. Anyway, it looks like not only a bad, but an unnecessary idea. And they dressed it up in crazy clothes to sell it to the gullible masses.

Why Neoliberal Austerity Measures Never, Won’t and Will Never Work

US unemployment is now 9.

There will be high unemployment because the US private sector is not creating jobs. It’s not in part because banks no longer lend much to the private sector. They cut back on that 20-30 years. There’s much more money to be made in financialization of the economy, in speculative investment, derivatives and other financial wizardry and in debt-driven real estate booms and bubbles.

Bottom line is that new US jobs will be created by the US government or not at all.

This reality is now hamstrung by the fiscal austerity madness that haunts Washington, and threatens to throw the US into its Third Depression. The first was in 1873. The second was in 1929. Both parties and the G-20 world economies are pushing Hooverism. Even Roosevelt showed up in 1932 pushing Hooverism. His campaign was to out-Hoover the Hooverites – he ran on a platform of balancing the budget. You don’t balance budgets in a Depression, or even try. That’s one lesson we thought we learned in the Depression.

The austerity measures shoved down the throats of both Greece and Latvia, poster children for neoliberal structural adjustment, haven’t worked. All of the tax increases on the middle and lower classes and the devastating government budget cuts have nuked the economies of Greece and Latvia, deepening their Depressions. The more they cut, paradoxically, the more it fucks the economy, hence the more the deficit grows. The more you cut the deficit, the more it grows. Think about that one a bit, neoliberals. The same thing is happening in Ireland.

What’s all this silliness based on? The Hooverian notion that tax increases on middle and lower classes and devastating budget cuts in a Depression will “restore confidence to the private sector and investors.” Problem is that this neoliberal crap didn’t work in 1929, and it won’t work now. It won’t work, ever, because it doesn’t.

One wonders why the plutocrats are pushing something that they must know, if they are sane at all, doesn’t work. In Latvia, they were up front and honest about it. The economy plunged by 2

What else?

In neoliberalism, if you bankrupt the state, the state has no money to spend in the economy. You need to rely on the private sector for everything. Less government spending in the economy means more cash for the private sector.

Another agenda is privatization. Canadian states are discussing selling off 1

No war but the class war.

It’s not only the only motto for the Left (fuck Cultural Marxism), but it’s always the only motto for the rich, the upper middle class and the capitalists. If the motto is good enough for them, why is it not good enough for you, oh workers?

Making Sense of Kosovo

Repost from the old site.

Updated March 25, 2008:

Via Joachim Martillo, we have Backgrounder on Kosovo/Kosova.

This is one of Martillo’s pieces that I am going to support in full.

Almost the entire Western Left, and part of the libertarian Right, seems to be opposed to independence for Kosovo. This is a most sorry state of affairs and has a rather shameless history. I am very happy that Martillo has come out in favor in independence for Kosovo, no matter how problematic it may be. I am afraid he did so only because he is a Muslim, but no matter.

A background in the Balkan Wars of the 1990’s is helpful, if not essential, in understanding the declaration of independence by Kosovo.

It is also important to understand where the Workers’ World Party, of which Sarah Flounders is a member, is coming from. I don’t know a lot about them, but this Wikipedia article is a good primer.

WWP is a Trotskyite split dating from 1958. They split from the Socialist Workers Party, a standard Trotskyite group.

Their reasons were: the candidacy of Henry Wallace for President in 1948, support for Mao’s revolution in China and defense of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

The SWP opposed all of these.

Mao is opposed by all Trotskyites, mostly on human rights grounds but also on the usual ultra-Left basis of not being socialist enough. Wallace’s candidacy, a revolutionary candidacy in the US in that an explicitly socialist candidate actually ran for office and got lots of votes, was probably opposed on ultra-Left reasons that he was not a Communist.

The invasion of Hungary would have been opposed on the basis that the USSR was “Stalinist”.

Trotskyites have always had a reputation of not being very pragmatic. In some ways, they are the ultimate splitters.

The WWP retains some Trotskyite leanings in that they are highly critical of Stalin. However, after Stalin died, they supported the USSR. Many Communist parties chose sides after the Soviet-China split, but the WWP continued to call for a union of all socialist countries, no matter what their ideology. In this sense, they are somewhat unique.

They also started supporting all states that were seen as resisting US imperialism. This led to difficult stances such as supporting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

It is in this context that they opposed the breakup of Milosevic’s Communist Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s and thereafter supported Milosevic on the basis that he was a Communist. In this they reflected the views of most Communists and Leftists the world over – they supported the fascist Milosevic just because he was a Communist.

WWP is also behind International ANSWER Coalition, which led many antiwar marches. Ramsey Clark has unfortunately been associated with this group. I do not think much of the WWP.

Fascism is a nasty virus, and like many viruses, it can grow in most any human being and certainly can unfold in any society. This is what makes it such a dangerous and deadly enemy. In many ways, Russia is now a fascist state. Even Communist Vietnam has fascist tendencies of various types. It can even be argued that break away from Iran and take most of Iran’s oil wealth with them. Iran should not be expected to put up with that. A similar situation exists in Angola with Ahwaz, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Corsica, Brittany, Wales, Scotland, the here and here), Burma (separatists here , here, here, West Papua nor to its rule over Aceh, and its criminal performance in suppressing these rebellions cements those negations.

India never had any right to rule Kashmir and certainly does not now. Palestine at least ought to declare Kosovo-style independence. This blog has always supported the struggle of the Sahrawis in Spanish Sahara. The island of Bougainville deserves support for its separatism from Papua New Guinea.

In Russia, the republics of the Caucasus deserve support in their drive for independence. This includes the Chechens, the Ingush, the Dagestanis, Karachevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. The Tuvans seem to deserve the right to secede also.

The situation of the Mari, Chuvash , Bashkirs , Udmurts and Tatarstan are much more difficult because none of these republics exist on Russia’s borders. States should not be forced to carve out enclaves inside their own borders. All secessionists need to cleave off lands on the borders of existing states or even split existing states. The notion of independent islands wholly surrounded by a single state is preposterous.

In India, the nations of the northeast were never part of India and their secessionist movements should be supported. Nor can India ever be said to have existed at all until 1949, as under the British it was merely a collection of 5,000 separate princely states with ever-shifting borders.

In China, the cause of Taiwan and Tibet is clearly moral and East Turkestan also seems to have a valid cause. Abkhazia and South Ossetia should be allowed to cleave off from Georgia, and they already have anyway, de facto, though Russia is supporting these movements for only the most cynical reasons. The Tamils of Sri Lanka deserve support, despite their terrible tactics.

I have much more of a problem in supporting Islamist separatists in the Philippines and in Thailand. First, their tactics are horrible. In both cases, Islamists, as they always do in wars, are simply massacring non-Muslim civilians in countless numbers.

The Koran provides justification for mass murder of non-Muslims in wartime, so this is typical behavior of most Muslims when they go to war with non-Muslims. The historical antecedents are too painful and numerous to count. Furthermore, the war against the non-Muslims often takes near-genocidal proportions.

There are examples in this century from Indonesia (Muslims massacred animists in West Papua and Christians in slaughtering Christians in the 1840’s-1860’s) and Iraq (more mass murders of Assyrians in Iraq in the mid-1800’s) and the worst of all in India around 500 years ago, when Muslim invaders murdered up to and possibly more than 50 million Hindus in the worst genocide that the world has ever seen. Quoting Will Durant:

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

This continues a tradition set in the early days of Islam, when invading Muslims often committed massacres of non-Muslims in various places they conquered. Notable examples occurred in Palestine and in Iran. The only conclusion is that when Muslims fight wars with non-Muslims, they are frequently genocidal conflicts, and this genocidalism is sadly sanctioned by language in the Koran itself.

As such, it is difficult to support a bunch of Islamist murderers in the Pattani region of Thailand and in Mindanao in the Philippines. In Mindanao, Muslims are only 2

Hawaii deserves to go free, but the movement has no support except among Hawaiians, about 2

In most cases, like baby birds from the nest, these colonies need to be tossed out on their own. Most are welfare cases anyway that take in far more from the Western state they are umbilically attached to than they donate in services. In other words, to the colonizer, they are a gigantic money drain.

This begs the question then of why these colonies even exist, since the logic of colonialism, which is all about the loot, demands that money-losing colonies be cut adrift. In some cases, there are imperial reasons, in others, there is simply the logic of colonialism. Once a nation becomes a colonist, the power rush is as addicting as crack. It’s a tough habit to break.

Two essential rights are at stake here.

First is the right to self-determination. This has even been ratified by the UN.

The other is a totally phony “right of a state to be secure within its borders”, which was dreamed up by states after World War 2 in their paranoia over national secessionism. This principle has no standing, as state borders have been shifting forever, and many states have only the most dubious standing for drawing their borders wherever they did.

It’s clear that the only progressive stand worth taking is in favor of self-determination. However, we should make exceptions in certain cases as above, and only real nations should have the right to secede. The right to secede should not be granted on economic or purely political grounds (such as the rightwing state of Zulia in Venezuela the rightwing Sarah Flounders’ article below entitled Washington Gets a New Colony in the Balkans is fairly typical of the criticism of the Kosovo declaration of independence.

While the USA does a lot of evil in the world, the breakup of Yugoslavia may at least initially have been a project of the German government, which for historical reasons was much more interested in an independent Slovenia than the USA was.

Neocons like Joshua Muravchik fairly quickly saw a possible opportunity to cultivate a pro-Israel Muslim population (either Slavic or Albanian) in a divided Yugoslavia. Finding such a Muslim population has been a holy grail of Zionism since Herzl created the character of Reshid Bey in Old New Land (Altneuland).

Sorting out the various claims about Kosovo requires awareness of the changing boundaries of the region. Here are two maps of the Ottoman Vilayet of Kosovo:

The first map of the Ottoman vilayet (province) of Kosovo, from 1875-1878. Kosovo is now much reduced in size from this vilayet.

The second map of the vilayet of Kosovo, from 1881-1912, shows shifting boundaries once again. Kosovo today is much smaller than this vilayet.

Claiming that Kosovo is the historical center of Serb culture is somewhat tendentious. The Ottoman Vilayet of Kosovo was larger than present-day Kosovo, and its borders shifted during the 19th and early 20th century.

Territory that had been Ottoman Kosovo is today divided among Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. Kosovo regions that were in some sense the historically important Serb centers have for the most part been incorporated into Serbia, Montenegro or Macedonia. Here is a current map of Kosovo:

A current map of Kosovo, much shrunken from its former vilayet. When Serbs scream about Kosovo, you really need to ask which one they are talking about.

Ethnic Albanian Kosovars could probably legitimately argue that they rebelled from the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 in order to achieve independence or union with Albania, whose independence European Great Powers endorsed in 1913, but the Serbian government opportunistically used to rebellion to expand Serbia at their expense.

The Serb obsession with controlling all of Kosovo results from the development of a nationalist mythology that focuses on the Battle of Kosovo (Косовски бој, Kosova Savasi, Bitka na Kosovu, Beteja e Kosovës, or Schlacht auf dem Amselfeld).

The mythology has little connection to the facts. Lazar’s army (the “Serb” side) included Croats, ethnic Albanians (who were mostly Orthodox at that time period) and probably Bosnians. Murad’s army (the “Turkish” side) included a large contingent of Serbs.

The population composition of Kosovo/Kosova in the 14th century and later is disputed. It was not unusual for a close relative of someone with a Serb name to bear an Albanian name. Later Serb literature refers to Albanized Serb populations, but the description is dubious. Bilingualism was simply common, and the ethnic boundaries that exist today really only came into existence in the 19th century.

The following paragraphs are propagandistic:

Yugoslavia was born with a heritage of antagonisms that had been endlessly exploited by the Ottoman Turks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and interference by British and French imperialism, followed by Nazi German and Italian Fascist occupation in World War II.

The Jewish and Serbian peoples suffered the greatest losses in that war. A powerful communist-led resistance movement made up of all the nationalities, which had suffered in different ways, was forged against Nazi occupation and all outside intervention. After the liberation, all the nationalities cooperated and compromised in building the new socialist federation.

There simply is not much evidence of Ottoman exploitation of ethnic or religious antagonism either from Ottoman or non-Ottoman sources. The Ottoman rulers generally tried to discourage local Balkan hostilities because they were administratively costly and interfered with tax collection.

The omission of any mention of Czarist Russian imperial interference shows bias.

Terminology like Jewish and Serbian peoples is questionable. Yugoslavia contained Jewish populations of Ashkenazi ethnicity and of Ibero-Berber refugee ethnicity. The term “Jewish people” comes from Zionist propaganda. While there is a Serb ethnicity, there is no Serbian ethnicity because people of many different ethnicities live within the territory of Serbia.

The implicit attempt to connect Jewish and Serb losses during WW2 is misleading. Serb politics in the lead-up to WW2 had clear fascist and Nazi currents.

While many Serb political leaders wanted to work with Germany, the German government rebuffed them because too many Germans and Austrians blamed Serbs for WW1 and the subsequent dismantlement of the pre-WW1 German and Austrian Empires.

German and Austrian hostility toward Serbs increased during WW2 and probably influenced German policy toward Serbia during the 1990s.

The situation of Kosovo before NATO intervention was a mess. It has remained a mess, and there is no particular reason to believe that independence will lead to improvement.

Kosovo’s ‘independence’ Washington gets a new colony in the Balkans

By Sara Flounders Published Feb 21, 2008 8:13 PM

In evaluating the recent “declaration of independence” by Kosovo, a province of Serbia, and its immediate recognition as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France, it is important to know three things.

First, Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal self-government. It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and domestic policy. U.S. imperialism has merely consolidated its direct control of a totally dependent colony in the heart of the Balkans.

Second, Washington’s immediate recognition of Kosovo confirms once again that U.S. imperialism will break any and every treaty or international agreement it has ever signed, including agreements it drafted and imposed by force and violence on others.

The recognition of Kosovo is in direct violation of such laws – specifically U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which the leaders of Yugoslavia were forced to sign to end the 78 days of NATO bombing of their country in 1999. Even this imposed agreement affirmed the “commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Serbia, a republic of Yugoslavia.

This week’s illegal recognition of Kosovo was condemned by Serbia, Russia, China and Spain.

Thirdly, U.S. imperialist domination does not benefit the occupied people. Kosovo after nine years of direct NATO military occupation has a staggering 60 percent unemployment rate. It has become a center of the international drug trade and of prostitution rings in Europe.

The once humming mines, mills, smelters, refining centers and railroads of this small resource-rich industrial area all sit silent. The resources of Kosovo under NATO occupation were forcibly privatized and sold to giant Western multinational corporations. Now almost the only employment is working for the U.S./NATO army of occupation or U.N. agencies.

The only major construction in Kosovo is of Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S. base built in Europe in a generation.Halliburton, of course, got the contract. Camp Bondsteel guards the strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region.

Over 250,000 Serbian, Romani and other nationalities have been driven out of this Serbian province since it came under U.S./NATO control. Almost a quarter of the Albanian population has been forced to leave in order to find work.

Establishing a colonial administration

Consider the plan under which Kosovo’s “independence” is to happen. Not only does it violate U.N. resolutions but it is also a total colonial structure. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

How did this colonial plan come about? It was proposed by the same forces responsible for the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing and occupation of Kosovo.

In June of 2005, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as his special envoy to lead the negotiations on Kosovo’s final status. Ahtisaari is hardly a neutral arbitrator when it comes to U.S. intervention in Kosovo.

He is chairman emeritus of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization funded by multibillionaire George Soros that promotes NATO expansion and intervention along with open markets for U.S. and E.U. investment.

The board of the ICG includes two key U.S. officials responsible for the bombing of Kosovo: Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In March 2007, Ahtisaari gave his Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

The documents setting out the new government for Kosovo are available here. A summary is available on the U.S. State Department’s Web site. An International Civilian Representative (ICR) will be appointed by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee Kosovo.

This appointed official can overrule any measures, annul any laws and remove anyone from office in Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control over the departments of Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.

The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO will establish an International Military Presence. Both these appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. They are guaranteed immediate and complete access to any activity, proceeding or document in Kosovo.

These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes can be prosecuted and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision made. The largest prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel, where prisoners are held without charges, judicial overview or representation.

The recognition of Kosovo’s “independence” is just the latest step in a U.S. war of reconquest that has been relentlessly pursued for decades.

Divide and rule

The Balkans has been a vibrant patchwork of many oppressed nationalities, cultures and religions. The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia, formed after World War II, contained six republics, none of which had a majority.

Yugoslavia was born with a heritage of antagonisms that had been endlessly exploited by the Ottoman Turks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and interference by British and French imperialism, followed by Nazi German and Italian Fascist occupation in World War II.

The Jewish and Serbian peoples suffered the greatest losses in that war. A powerful communist-led resistance movement made up of all the nationalities, which had suffered in different ways, was forged against Nazi occupation and all outside intervention. After the liberation, all the nationalities cooperated and compromised in building the new socialist federation.

In 45 years the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia developed from an impoverished, underdeveloped, feuding region into a stable country with an industrial base, full literacy and health care for the whole population.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the Pentagon immediately laid plans for the aggressive expansion of NATO into the East. Divide and rule became U.S. policy throughout the entire region. Everywhere right-wing, pro-capitalist forces were financed and encouraged.

As the Soviet Union was broken up into separate, weakened, unstable and feuding republics, the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia tried to resist this reactionary wave.

In 1991, while world attention was focused on the devastating U.S. bombing of Iraq, Washington encouraged, financed and armed right-wing separatist movements in the Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian republics of the Yugoslav Federation. In violation of international agreements Germany and the U.S. gave quick recognition to these secessionist movements and approved the creation of several capitalist mini-states.

At the same time U.S. finance capital imposed severe economic sanctions on Yugoslavia to bankrupt its economy. Washington then promoted NATO as the only force able to bring stability to the region.

The arming and financing of the right-wing UCK movement in the Serbian province of Kosovo began in this same period. Kosovo was not a distinct republic within the Yugoslav Federation but a province in the Serbian Republic. Historically, it had been a center of Serbian national identity, but with a growing Albanian population.

Washington initiated a wild propaganda campaign claiming that Serbia was carrying out a campaign of massive genocide against the Albanian majority in Kosovo. The Western media was full of stories of mass graves and brutal rapes. U.S. officials claimed that from 100,000 up to 500,000 Albanians had been massacred.

U.S./NATO officials under the Clinton administration issued an outrageous ultimatum that Serbia immediately accept military occupation and surrender all sovereignty or face NATO bombardment of its cities, towns and infrastructure. When, at a negotiation session in Rambouillet, France, the Serbian Parliament voted to refuse NATO’s demands, the bombing began.

In 78 days the Pentagon dropped 35,000 cluster bombs, used thousands of rounds of radioactive depleted-uranium rounds, along with bunker busters and cruise missiles.

The bombing destroyed more than 480 schools, 33 hospitals, numerous health clinics, 60 bridges, along with industrial, chemical and heating plants, and the electrical grid. Kosovo, the region that Washington was supposedly determined to liberate, received the greatest destruction.

Finally on June 3, 1999, Yugoslavia was forced to agree to a ceasefire and the occupation of Kosovo.

Expecting to find bodies everywhere, forensic teams from 17 NATO countries organized by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes searched occupied Kosovo all summer of 1999 but found a total of only 2,108 bodies, of all nationalities.

Some had been killed by NATO bombing and some in the war between the UCK and the Serbian police and military. They found not one mass grave and could produce no evidence of massacres or of “genocide.”

This stunning rebuttal of the imperialist propaganda comes from a report released by the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte. It was covered, but without fanfare, in the New York Times of Nov. 11, 1999.

The wild propaganda of genocide and tales of mass graves were as false as the later claims that Iraq had and was preparing to use “weapons of mass destruction.”

Through war, assassinations, coups and economic strangulation, Washington has succeeded for now in imposing neoliberal economic policies on all of the six former Yugoslav republics and breaking them into unstable and impoverished mini-states.

The very instability and wrenching poverty that imperialism has brought to the region will in the long run be the seeds of its undoing. The history of the achievements made when Yugoslavia enjoyed real independence and sovereignty through unity and socialist development will assert itself in the future.

Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, traveled to Yugoslavia during the 1999 U.S. bombing and reported on the extent of the U.S. attacks on civilian targets. She is a co-author and editor of the books: Hidden Agenda:U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia and NATO in the Balkans.

Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

References

Durant, Will. 1972. Story of Civilization, Vol.1, Our Oriental Heritage, p.459. New York.

American High School Girl Beaten to Death in Mexico

Elizabeth Mandala, an 18-year old high school girl from Sugar Land, Texas, went with two Mexican men, age 38 and 43, old enough to be her father, on a trip to Mexico to learn how to be a coyote and smuggle illegal aliens into the US. Smuggling illegals is a very good paying business. At the time, she was also working as a stripper in a local strip club. She was said to be “smartest girl in her class.”

Elzabeth Mandala, 18 year old US high school girl, beaten to death in Mexico.

I guess not too smart though.

She and the two men were found near the small town of Mina in a Toyota pickup truck that had crashed into the back of another truck. All three had been beaten to death. The killers then apparently staged the car accident. There was a cement block on the gas pedal of the crashed vehicle.

The two Mexican men were Dante Ruiz Siller, 38, and Luis Ángel Estrella Mondragón, 44.

Siller, a merchant, and Mondragon, a cab driver, were from a small town near Mexico City.

Comments are wide-ranging, many asking why Texas allows 18 year old girls to be strippers (All US states allow this). Many others asked why her mother allowed her to be a stripper and to go off to Mexico to learn how to smuggle illegals. I would say that she’s an adult and she can do whatever she wants, but that’s just me.

Her classmates at Kempner High School were shocked.

There is a lot of commentary about this on the White nationalist sites, much of it retarded, of course. Much of it is centered on the WN’s notion that Elizabeth was a mestiza, not White. However, the last name Mandala is Sicilian:

Mandala Name Meaning and History1. occupational name for a seller of scarves, from Greek mandilas.

2. altered form of Mannalà, a name of Arabic origin, derived from mann Allah ‘grace of Allah’. The surname is characteristic of the Palermo region and eastern Sicily.

Looks like Arabic -> Greek -> Sicilian language. The Sicilian language has a ton of Greek and Arabic words in it.

A number of Mandalas moved from Sicily to Houston, Texas around 75-125 years ago. All came from the same small village of 919 people in Sicily. Santa Cristina Gela is actually an Arbëreshë village in Sicily near Palermo. The Elizabeth is from Sugar Land, which is near Houston. She is plausibly related to this CBS photo gallery.

Furthermore, on her Facebook page, she has several friends with the same last name Mandala, quite possibly relatives. These Mandalas are all Italians living in Italy right now. The second one seems to be some sort of a Greek-Sicilian, which is possible, as there are Greek-speaking communities in Sicily. Furthermore, she is a fan of a Facebook group that is entirely in the Italian language, so it’s possible that she speaks Italian.

African Immigrants in Europe – Is The Camp Of The Saints Coming True?

In the comments section, the brilliant James Schipper notes:

Some white countries are not very attractive, but whites can create attractive places, while so far we have not seen one black-dominated country that even remotely resembles Switzerland. This means that, it there is freedom of movement between black-dominated and white-dominated countries, there will be a massive flow from the former to the latter.

Europe has now around 700 million people and low fertility while black Africa has around 800 million and high fertility. Already there is constant illegal immigration from Africa into Europe. If nothing is done to stop this, Europe may eventually become a mainly black continent. I think that the white nationalists are quite right to warn about that.

James’ comment is absolutely right-on. This is exactly what is occurring in Southern Europe as we speak. He’s also correct that only the WN’s and the Right seem to be raising a fuss about it.

The entire European Left has gone insane on this question, and the Far Left, such as Italian Maoists who regularly send me communiques, are the most deranged of all. The Italian Maoists’ main issue seems to be to let all of the African illegal immigrants stay in Italy and get legalized. They’re obviously pro-Open Borders as the whole Western Far Left is. So they’re basically advocating a mass invasion of Italy by Black Africa, at which point Italy will become unrecognizable and will transition to a Black country. I can’t put into words what a terrible idea this is.

To which tulio responded that most Africans want to stay in Africa, and there are probably more Whites in Africa than Africans in Europe. Sure, but the Whites in Africa are not a problem and if anything, probably help the place out. Mass movement of poor, uneducated Africans into Europe is another matter altogether.

So the fact the flow goes in both directions is sort of irrelevant as it’s good in one direction for the hosts and bad in the other.

Clearly, not all Africans in Europe are bad news. A friend of mine is from Togo. He is one of the most brilliant people I have ever known, and he is Black as the night. He went to Morocco, got a degree there (and had a great time as a Catholic in a Muslim country) then went to France since he spoke French. He went to more college classes in France and graduated with honors. He was instantly snapped up by an IT firm.

This guy is so smart that he regularly works with MIT graduate students in computer science on IT stuff that is so cutting edge that I can’t make heads or tails of it. He now has a nice job in Brittany, France, and he is usually in a corporate meeting of some sort. He’s also been very popular with the White girls in France, but that’s another matter. He managed to get his sister into France too. Guys like Coco are great for France, but most Africans in Europe are not like this guy.

It’s true that most Blacks are staying in Africa, but African (Black African, not North African) immigration mostly to Southern Europe is seriously out of control. It’s kind of sad in a way because a lot of them are coming on boats, and they have to turn them back. The boats are coming to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Malta, etc. Malta at this point is so overrun it’s almost a disaster zone. Black Africans are all over Ibiza, filling up the Internet cafes with Nigerian scammers. Almost all of the Black Africans in these cafes are Nigerian criminals.

The Black African population in Italy in Greece is a huge problem like the illegal Hispanics in the US. The countries are dominated by liberal fuckheads so they don’t want to kick them out, but the Africans can’t really live there legally. Everyone knows they are illegals, but no one really does anything about it. Kind of like this stupid-ass country! A lot of the Africans are just squatters and whatnot. Many of the Nigerians have formed criminal gangs in Italy, where the Mafia is now whacking them off as competition.

The Europeans are too nice for their own good, kind of like us.

Mass camps of immigrants are in the north of France trying to make it to the UK, where the welfare pickings are a lot better. They periodically make mad rushes for the boats to the UK. Police come in and tear down the illegal camps, but they set them right back up again. Black Africans in France are already a serious problem, and they are committing tons of crime, especially rape, including gang rape (the Black and Muslim specialty crime).

It’s sad and pitiful that these boats are heading to Europe but they really need to be turned back. Have you heard of the book The Camp of the Saints? It really is something like that, and it’s happening as I write this.

In West African nations like Senegal, boats regularly leave for Spain and Portugal.

As an aside, White nationalists like to ridicule Africans by saying that they were too stupid to even figure out how to get to Madagascar, but this is apparently not true. They did get to Madagascar a long time ago, but then I guess they forgot how to build boats to go there anymore.

That is, there was an ancient hunter gatherer population of Blacks (Mikea) who could only have gotten there by boats when the Indonesians landed, but the more modern agricultural Blacks in Africa at the time did not have the maritime knowledge to figure out how to get there.

At any rate, my point is these historical arguments are sort of stupid. Who the F cares how backwards East Africans were 1,700 years ago?

My point is that nowadays anyway, even totally backwards West African Blacks are capable of building and steering boats that take them all the way from Senegal to Spain. Not bad. The take home point is that pre-contact Africans may have been backwards, but post-contact Blacks are much more advanced. That they are more advanced due to contact with other cultures or even White cultures is not that relevant. Cultural diffusion happens!

Nords Versus Meds, Game Starts at 8 Eastern Time

In the post, Albanians Are Neither White Nor Europeans? Lafayette Sennacherib takes issue with some of my anti-Nordicist POV, suggesting that ancient Greece was populated from the North, specifically the Baltics:

…there may turn out to be some truth in the notion that the Myceneans came from the North (though I think it unlikely that many went back).

I mentioned here before that I’d recently come across this book by Felice Vinci: The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales.

Homer, as you are no doubt aware, is credited  (it’s not known if he was one or many authors) with the creation of the earliest European literature with his epic tales ‘the Iliad’ about the Trojan war, and ‘the Odyssey’ about the journeys of Odysseus as he tries to find his way home, with a boatload of men, after the war.

Last I heard, the best guess is that it was composed about 1200BC and written down about 7oo BC. Trouble is, there’s a lot of description in Homer, but none of it fits the Mediterranean.

You’ve guessed what’s coming: Felice has matched all the descriptions and journey times and directions to the Baltic. Apparently there was a verifiable drastic climate change before which the Baltic was a lot more user friendly.

I think ( I haven’t read the book yet), from reviews I’ve read, that he places some of Odysseus’ travels quite far afield up the North Sea coast of Norway, and even to the Shetlands and Orkneys and possibly Scotland and Britain.

If you’ve ever seen the ancient underground towns in Shetland or Orkney (the back of beyond these days; in fact even the Romans called them Ultima Thule – the ends of the Earth), which seem to have had efficient plumbing maybe as early as 1500 BC, you can’t help but wonder how such refinements came to be in this most unlikely of places – Felice’s theory would locate them in a lively interlinked maritime world centering on the Baltic.

Of course, this isn’t proven, but I get the impression that some serious people are taking this seriously enough to fund more research.

Felice speculates that deteriorating climatic conditions caused many of these Baltic peoples to migrate south, and that they took their myths and poems with them, and that the reason that some of the names of towns correspond to known and existing Greek sites is that they named places in their new home after places in their old home, as Europeans have so obviously done in the USA, Australia and so on.

Well, I agree that the theory is interesting, but in the long run, none of it really makes sense from a Nordicist POV. Germanic tribes went all over Europe, so the very idea of Med and Nordic doesn’t make a lot of sense. And Meds went all over up into the north too. The two groups totally mixed in with each other. Nordics are part Med and Meds are part Nordic. Bottom line is that modern Greeks are the same folks as ancient Greeks, no matter where they came from. Modern Italians are the same as the ancient Romans, no matter where the Romans came from. Nordicists take issue with this, and say that Rome and Greece were created by some glorious Nordic types, and then after the Fall, some kind of mud people* or nigger people* from the South (I guess that means Arabs, North Africans, Ethiopians, Lebanese) came into Greece and Italy and muddied up these beautiful White German folks, creating the present day swarthy Med. Nordicists are serious assholes! The ones here in the US really, really, really, really hate Southern Europeans. They think they are inferior greaseball part-Mud*, part-nigger* people. Most US Nordicists say that Meds are not even White. Anti-Southern European prejudice and discrimination, especially discrimination against Italians and Catholics, is pretty much history in White America, but at one time, this was a prominent trend. Italians have moved into the White Ruling Class, and the Catholic JFK was elected and ruled Camelot 50 years ago. Even the KKK lets Catholics in now, and says let’s let bygones be bygones. The fact that probably 8 If you read the original Nazi racialist authors, they do not say this at all. Say what you will about them, but they pursued this stuff as a science. They agreed that Meds were a great White people, and that the modern Meds are descendants of the great cultures of Greece and Rome. They listed many attributes of the Meds and said that in many ways, Meds were superior to Nordics. However, Nordics were also superior to Meds in many ways. When it all tallied up, the Nordics came out on top, but only slightly. To say that the Nazis felt that Meds were inferior is completely mistaken. Meds were a great White people, but Nordics were also great, and Nordics were somewhat greater the Meds. Of course they had to put themselves on top, all Supremacists do. One thing the Nazi racialist scientists did say was that Meds were very creative, perhaps the most inventive and creative Whites that ever existed, or maybe the most inventive and creative humans that ever existed. They said that Meds were superior in terms of the arts, which is somewhat related. I concur. Modern day Nordicists (neo-Nazis in general) who despise and disparage Meds as non-Whites, in all honesty, would have been thrown out of the Nazi Party in Germany! That’s how out of it they are. This is sort of a peculiarly American and Australian thing – the Nordicist contempt for Meds. I’m not sure if you see it that much in Europe, though people are always going to be rivals. It does exist in Italy though, where the Padanianists pour scorn on the “part-nigger”* Southerners. The Padanianists also take pride in being “Celtic.” However, non-racial frustration with the South extends as far south as Abruzze (east of Rome) in Italy. Even in Abruzze, they think that they work hard and they don’t get all their tax money back. Instead it goes to the unproductive South, who take more in revenues than they contribute in taxes. Further, in Abruzze, there is frustration that any tax money sent South in the form of revenues is wasted, as it just goes to the Camorra (Mafia) anyway. The notion of the South, and that means Naples south (Naples is thoroughly Camorra-overrun) as being the Land of the Camorra is not misplaced. The Camorra for all intents and purposes practically run the show down there. Police try to fight them, but they are overwhelmed. Most of the politicians are paid off, and those who are not might get shot. Judges and investigative journalists are routinely threatened and gunned down. There was also something like this North-South rivalry in the former Yugoslavia, with the notion being that Slovenia and Croatia were the economic engines of the place, and everything south just took in more revenues than they paid out in taxes. In the north of Spain, there is some pride once again in being “Celtic”, but I am not aware that Northern Spaniards hate Southern Spaniards all that much, or at all. Some of the north, especially around Leon and Asturias, is in bad shape economically, and I’m sure they take more in revenues than they pay in taxes, so the North-South thing doesn’t really work. In Western Asturias in particular, the region is depopulating, and most towns are losing population. Even wolves are coming back to the hills and foraging in garbage dumps outside of towns. In 20 years, many villages in Western Asturias may be effectively abandoned. The economic and industrial engines of Spain are in the Basque Country and Catalonia (industry in the Basque area, corporate offices in Catalonia). This is one of the main reasons why Spain is dead-set against having these regions secede. *Used sardonically.

People From the Caucasus are Blacks?

Repost from the old site. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXJGSRZWyq4]

Take a lot at these “Black” and “non-White” Chechen kids in Jordan. Boy, they sure look pretty darn White to me! Especially that girl with the dark red hair and the turquoise eyes. Wasn’t that one of Hitler’s favorite combinations? White Power boneheads.These people would probably be considered to be members of the Balkano-Caucasian race*. In this group, there are many with fair skin, light eyes and a lot of body hair.

This will go along with another post I wrote along the same lines, Are Dagestanis and Tajiks White?. The conclusion of that post was, yes, they are White. The reason it is even an issue is that Russians insist that the people of the Caucasus are “Blacks” and “non-Whites”. It seems that quite a few White nationalists also deny that Armenians, Georgians, Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis, Chechens and other Caucasian peoples are White. White in this case will refer to peoples having a phenotype that is not only Caucasoid but also resembles European Caucasoids. As you can see in this neat video of cute little Chechen kids shot in Jordan. There is a large Chechen and Circassian population in Jordan dating back to the imperial wars of conquest that Russia waged on the Caucasus from 1806-1863. Having looked at quite a few pictures of people from the Caucasus, I think that there is a distinctive phenotype there. Some say that the people of the Caucasus are the only Whites or Caucasians who should be considered “pure” Caucasians, as opposed to any mongrelized Europeans, although the whole concept of pure races and mongrelized races is pretty ridiculous.

More “non-Whites” or “Blacks” or whatever. This is a photo from a law firm in Georgia. This could be a photo of any American law firm. There does seem to be a bit of a Georgian phenotype. There are suggestions that the people of the Caucasus are the “purest” Euro-Caucasians of them all, though the whole notion is pretty silly.On the other hand, it is thought that the Caucasoid race did begin somewhere around this region, and the Middle East, the Caucasus, India and North Africa have been among the most important regions in incubating and developing of the proto-Caucasians.Georgians are probably members of the West-Caucasian type of the Balkano-Caucasian race. They are characterized by an above-average stature, a slight build, relatively light skin, sharp features and dark eyes. A pretty typical Dagestani phenotype in this young girl. Notice the women with the head coverings. As you can see, these folks are obviously non-Whites. Snark. Dagestanis are part of the Caucasian division of the Balkano-Caucasian Race*. This race is highly variable and varies among ethnic groups, but its principal features are a massive skull, medium height and relatively light skin. In the Bagulals, it is characterized by comparatively dark pigmentation, a massive broad face and a round skull and large stature. The Udis have massive skulls and relatively light skin. The Tindis are more related to the Caspian Race, with a smaller skull and darker features. In the Tabasarans, a thin face is present. The Khinalugs have hooked noses like Jews and Arabs. The Archis have an aquiline nose, a high forehead and short stature. A Dagestani girl with a possibly Iranian appearance. The people of the Caucasus are extremely diverse genetically, with as great a distance between small groups as between large groups around the world. They may have achieved this high rate of differentiation due to the high peaks which allowed people to remain in their valleys, interact and breed little with outsiders and cultivate strange and wildly divergent languages. Genetically, they are Caucasians, but they are apart from most Europeans. But then so are Basques and Sardinians. There is a Chechen girl in the video above who has a similar phenotype. Azerbaijani kids. The blonde and probably blue-eyed kids look like they could be Norwegians. The general consensus is that Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan are not a Turkic people. Instead, they are a people of the Caucasus, like Georgians or Armenians, who converted to Islam and adopted a Turkic tongue. The mechanism is unknown, but possibly they were conquered by a Turkic people. They may have been Christians before this conquest. Azerbaijanis are as White as you can get. More very White-looking Azerbaijanis from their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. They look like British, Americans, or Danes. Some Azerbaijanis, probably at a town meeting. This is a secular Shia Muslim society, but the women generally cover their hair.

Some of the most infamous students of race, in particular the Caucasoid Race, especially the White or European branch of it, were the Nazis. The Nazis were actually incredible in this regard. Germans are pretty obsessive and studious about most things, and they love to write up ponderous, footnoted essays on everything around them. The Nazis were no different. The were some of the most horrible murderers in history, but they were particular about who they killed. They were even particular about Jews. Their beef was not with the Jewish religion – the Nazi beef with the Jews had to do with race. All of the things that Nazis disliked about Jews were said to be genetically coded into the Jewish genome, and the Jews who they really hated with the Ashkenazim. For instance, when the Nazis moved into the Caucasus and the Crimea from Spring to September of 1944, they ran into Mountain Jews (Jews of the Caucasus), the Karaites (a split-off sect from Judaism, and the Krymchaks of the Crimea. The Krymchaks were determined to be Jews by Himmler himself and ordered destroyed, although they were generally considered to be non-Ashkenazi Jews. The Karaites were considered to be racially Tatars, descended from the famous Jews of the Khazar Kingdom, and hence were ordered to be saved. However, there was some confusion, and some were killed. Amazingly, the Einsatzgruppen themselves (the fanatical murderers of lore) actually conducted research studies into the Karaites when they showed up in the Crimea to determine if they should be killed or not. They also sent requests back to Germany for guidance on whether or not to kill the Karaites. The Karaites themselves petitioned to the Nazis that they were not Jews, and a number even went to work for the Nazis. 400-500 even fought in the German Army. In Crimea and Stavropol, communities of Mountain Jews were destroyed. However, when the Nazis conquered part of the Caucasus from August to October 1944, in particular the towns of Mozdok and Nalchik, the Mountain Jews there were largely spared. There was a controversy in the party over whether or not they were really Jews. The Nazi Party said they were, but German specialists in Oriental Studies said they were racially Iranians. Here is a photo of the beautiful Sarit Hadad, a Mountain Jew whose parents moved to Israel. She’s a very famous singer in Israel. Incredibly, the Einsatzgruppen had scholars in its ranks who went into the homes of these Mountain Jews to conduct studies on whether to kill them or not! This controversy was not settled by the time that the Nazis were driven out in early 1943. It is interesting that in general, the Nazis cared much more about the racial stock of a given Jewish group than about whatever strange brand of Judaism they practiced. A good overview of this strange and complex situation is here in a piece by Kiril Feferman. Nazi racial scholars working at various institutes set up for the study of race in Germany (!) and within the Nazi Party also studied the people of the Caucasus. It is not known what they determined, but apparently the people of the Caucasus were considered non-Slavs and a good racial stock. At any rate, very large numbers of people in the Caucasus went over to the Nazis during World War 2. There is current anti-Communist revisionist thinking that says that hardly any Caucasians went over, but this is not the case. Many people in this region had long wanted to be free of the Orthodox Slavic Russians, and the Nazis played up this fear by offering them the promise of independence. At the time of the Russian invasion, Stalin put almost the entire population of Chechnya and Ingushetia on board trains for Siberia because he feared that they would cooperate with the Nazis. The local Chechen and Ingush governments had in fact welcomed the Nazis and said that they would collaborate with them. These deportations were horrible, and it is said that when they were returned to the Caucasus a decade later, 1/3 of them had died. The Crimeans were also deported on the basis of collaboration, and many of them died too. Many Crimeans had in fact collaborated with the Nazis. All through the region, there were lots of collaborators. There were separate Georgian, Armenian and Caucasian legions of volunteers in the Nazi military. After the Soviets withdrew, they went back to the Netherlands and served as an occupying force there. To be fair, many Caucasians also fought for the Red Army.

The emblem of the Georgian volunteer division of the Wehrmacht. The file says BeVOF, but I don’t know what that stands for.The Osttruppen Legion in the Caucasus already in 1943. I believe that these are local volunteers. Gleeful Nazi soldiers murder an innocent Soviet female villager and steal her ducks. This was standard practice during Operation Barbarossa in the Slavic regions, and 7 A Nazi soldier gets ready to murder two Soviet Slavic women during Operation Barbarossa. This incident probably took place in the Ukraine or Belarus, but I am not sure. These women aren’t being killed for any particular reason, only that they are Slavs. The emblem of the Armenian volunteer legion of the SS. The file says BeVOF, but I am not sure what that stands for. There were quite a few Armenians who considered themselves Aryans and went along with Nazi racial doctrine, and there are even some today. There are open neo-Nazi groups inside Armenia who distribute all sorts of nasty anti-Semitic conspiracy against Armenian Jews, tying them to the Armenian genocide and all sorts of nonsense. Anti-Semitism is a pretty serious problem in Armenia, and it’s pretty widespread. Strange for the Armenians, often called in the US, “Jews without money”. The SS sleeve of the Berghaukasien volunteers. This SS group was made up of Caucasian volunteers for the SS. A propaganda poster used in the Nazi invasion of the Caucasus. It says, “Free Caucasus From Bolshevik Tyranny.” Here is a propaganda poster for the Free Caucasus Movement set up by the Nazis after they invaded. I’m not sure what this file represents, but I think it is was the flag of an Armenian pro-Nazi group at the time. A map showing German allies in the Caucasus in November 1942. It lists the large volunteer divisions that were easily recruited in this region among Georgians, Caucasians, Crimeans and Armenians. Once more, the SS legions of the Caucasus who followed the Nazis out of the USSR and back to the Netherlands where they served as an occupying force. The Georgian, Armenian and Caucasian SS groups helped to occupy the Netherlands in from 1943-1945. A photo of the Bergmann Legionnaires, apparently a group of local Caucasian volunteers for the Nazis, in action in the Summer of 1942 in the Caucasus. The same Bergmann Legionnaires in action in Warsaw in 1944. I’m not sure what they were doing there, but possibly they were in action putting down a Warsaw Uprising that took place there in that year. Not the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the Jews in Spring 1943, but another one of the Gentiles. Incredibly, new anti-Communist revisionist material blames Stalin for the decimation of this uprising. Supposedly he waited on the outskirts of Warsaw until the Nazis had put down the uprising, and then he entered the city. Apparently he wanted to see all those Poles killed. Why? Commenters have more information about this in the comments thread for this post, including a more rational explanation for what took place. More photos of the Bergmann Legionnaires, this time in Greece in 1944. I don’t know what they were doing there, but I guess they were helping to occupy the place. Bergmann officers at a meal, location unknown but possibly Greece. The file says CD14 Festung Europa. I don’t know what that means, but this is obviously an anti-Soviet propaganda poster showing a Red Army solider coming from the East to destroy Christianity, with a torch in his hand. The Christian armies of Europe apparently wait to do battle with this invader from the East. This is apparently a book written by Eduard Abramian about the Bergmann Legionnaires, who included Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani and Caucasian factions. I bet that book is hard to find, but it might be an interesting read. An Armenian legionnaire on the Western front. This map shows the various Caucasian volunteer legions occupying the Netherlands in Summer of 1944. The Bergmann volunteer legion in Greece in 1944. Bergmann legionnaires in battle in 1944, location unknown.

*According to the old system of anthropology If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

The Key to Understanding US Behavior in Iraq

This post from the old blog is four years old, but it still pretty interesting in how it lays out neoconservative machinations in Iraq and goes into great details about the Sephardic Jewish community in the Mediterranean, particularly in Greece. This research was done to try to determine whether or not John Negroponte was Jewish, as asserted by some prominent anti-Semite “progressives” on the Net. As it turns out, he’s not Jewish at all. Apparently he’s a Greek Orthodox Christian. However, the name Negroponte can be a Sephardic Jewish name too, and it has links back to the history of the Sephardic Jews in Greece and Romania. This Jewish community is little-known, so some of you into Judaica might find it interesting. An old news story from four years ago blasted, “Syria Undermining Iraq’s Stability”. Robert Zoellick, a horrible Zionist Jew neoconservative who thirsts for Arab and Muslim blood, is the source of this “statement”. Zoellick, along with Zionist neoconservative Arab-killer John Negroponte, now the US ambassador to Iraq, was the latest neoconservative outrage to be shoved down the unwilling throats of the Iraqi people. Although the notion of whether or not Negroponte is Jewish is somewhat controversial – for instance, the popular Amygdala blog and the (now apparently defunct) blog Spookspot, both disagree – the balance of the evidence, so far ,Note May 2006: One year after I wrote this article, I no longer feel that Negroponte is Jewish. If he were, I think we would have heard about it by now. I feel that Negroponte is exactly what he says he is – a Greek Orthodox Christian. It is still possible, though not very relevant, that he may have Jewish roots. For that matter, many of us may have Jewish roots. But the major source for the notion that Negroponte is Jewish, Ghali Hassan, is, in my opinion, a proven liar and propagandist. I advise readers to take anything the intellectually dishonest Arab nationalist sophist Hassan says with a massive grain of salt. And Counterpunch needs to quit publishing this proven liar. Nevertheless, I still think this article has a lot of fascinating info about the Sephardic Greek Jewish community. Have fun reading it! The fact that a few leftwing writers have pointed out that Negroponte may be Jewish when he was selected as top Intel Czar and then later as the outrageous US Ambassador to Iraq has been noticed by some right wing bloggers and denounced as, you guessed it, “anti-Semitism”. See the obsessively Zionist Indymedia Watch (on the ambassador selection) and the conservative blog ColdHearted Truth (on the Intel Czar selection) for examples. As suggestive evidence, the name “Negroponte” is also the former name of the capital of Evoia Island, Chalkis; this link also contains a number of photos and paintings of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Jewish relics from Chalkis. The city acquired this name during the Venetian Domination, the period after Venetians conquered the island, which lasted from 1205-1470. This city is the only Jewish community in Europe that has been living in the same place for 2,500 years. The Jews on this island were very assimilated. De la Negroponte is the Italian name for Evoia; it is also a Venetian Italian surname from the 14th century. This city, Negroponte, was also a major destination for Turkish Jews fleeing the Ottoman conquest of Turkey and subsequent persecution of Jews, as described by a Jewish doctor from Istanbul, who fled to Negroponte with many other Jews in 1455. Furthermore, “Negroponte” is also the name of an ancient Jewish cemetery in Romania dating from the 14th Century; “Negroponte” was also the surname of a prominent Romanian Jewish family in that area. A famous Jewish author, born in Heraklion, Crete, toward the end of the 1100’s, was called “R. Chemarya of Negroponte“. A famous early translation of Genesis was done by a Greek Jew, Shemariah of Negroponte (1328-46). Shemariah was trying to bridge the gap between the Karaites and the Rabbinites. The evidence suggests that the name “Negroponte” may be a Romanian and Greek Jewish name dating from 14th and 15th Centuries. On the other hand, it is probably also a Greek Orthodox name too. Back to Zoellick and Negroponte. These dual outrages – the neoconservative Negroponte appointed as an ambassador to Iraq, the Jewish Zoellick making high-profile appearances in Iraq – were concocted deliberately by a single group of people. That group is the Zionist neoconservative Jews and their Zionist Gentile allies who have infiltrated our government and have successfully managed to take over at best or wield massive control over at worst, under George Bush, all of US Mideast foreign policy, and some of US non-Mideast foreign policy, for the Jewish-Israeli Lobby. Why were these deeply offensive moves done? In order to understand this, we need to understand the psychology of both the largely Jewish neocons and Jewish history and psychology in general. As a tribal people, indeed, as the most tribal humans on Earth, the Jews have a long history of this sort of thing. Jewish history tells us that the Jews have been noted for harboring endless grudges against whoever wronged them, even 2500 years in the past. It’s typical Jewish behavior to pine endlessly for defeat of any and all enemies, ancient or modern, to right the wrong done to the Jews, no matter how long ago. “Never forgive, never forget” was not invented with the Shoah – it’s classical Jewish psychology, and it doesn’t apply only to Nazis, it applies to any group that ever wronged the Jews. After defeating an enemy, Jewish history tells us that Jews have often tried to wipe out the collective culture and history of the adversary. This may explain the lackadaisical attitude the neocons took towards the looting and destruction of much of Iraq’s history and infrastructure. In addition, I have noticed that Jews seem to delight in utterly humiliating their enemies after they surrender. In fact, if an individual Jew ends a friendship with you after he suspects the slightest anti-Semitism (a very common occurrence) they usually will only accept you (if at all) again after forcing you to utterly humble and humiliate yourself at the feet of the Jews. This ties into the Jewish uber-tribal view of humanity, in which there are three categories of people – Jews (the only really important people in the world), non-Jews (people who barely exist in the human world, or are at least not important to it – kind of like the wild animals in your country lot), and enemies of the Jews – a vast, ever changing, always growing, undifferentiated mass of humanity. Not all Jews hold this tripartite worldview, but many do, particularly the Orthodox. A solid majority of US Jews (about 8 There is also a third category – suspected enemies of the Jews. For all practical purposes, these are nearly as bad as the enemies. Less assimilated, more traditional Jews will tend more towards the traditional tripartite world, more assimilated Jews will tend more towards the dual worldview and the most assimilated Jews will be like the rest of us and hardly trouble themselves with anti-Semites at all. The enemies are lumped together as “the people who threw us in the gas chambers” – everyone from the person who utters the slightest Jewish-critical remark to the most deranged genocidal Nazis – the Jews, in their blindness, see them all as one. The enemies are endlessly cultivated and provoked into greater and greater extremism, in part due to a Jewish need for as many enemies as possible, of maximum virulence. Jews do something I have never seen any other ethnic group do. If they feel you are anti-Semitic (often a false characterization) or anti-Israel even in the slightest, they will often immediately end the friendship or business-professional relationship with you, forever. At the very least the temperature of the relationship will grow colder. Completely unforgiving, totally black and white, no gray area. If these Jews continue in some professional relationship with you, they will sometimes try to screw you in order to “get back at the anti-Semitic enemy” – which is why it’s a bad idea to piss off your Jewish lawyer. As noted above, they may take you back if you debase yourself enough at their proud feet, but you will always retain a taint of suspicion. Jewish qualities of vengefulness, vindictiveness, a Manichean mindset, hypersensitivity to criticism, us versus them thinking, obsession with enemies, provocation of enemies, need for victimhood, and desire to humiliate the crushed enemies are some of the most extreme examples of these behaviors I have seen in any human group. I’m going to submit that there is something pathological about these extreme behaviors. A more important question is: What is the explanation for the Jewish behaviors above? A variety of explanations have been offered for the Jewish behaviors above, along with other Jewish behaviors deemed objectionable by non-Jews. The standard, classical anti-Semitic line is that Jews are just plain damn evil. The racial anti-Semitic view is that Jews are not only evil – they are born evil, their evilness is genetic, and it’s bred right into their genome – this was the Nazi line. The Islamist line is that it is due to the Jewish religion, a religion that causes ornery and malicious behavior due to its innate characteristics. Christian anti-Semitism also focuses on the Jewish religion as the source of these behaviors. Catholic anti-Semitism will lay furious blame on the Jews’ role in killing Jesus, a crime that, according to this doctrine, the Jews can never live down. These explanations also differ in the possibility of Jewish redemption. The racial point of view says that since Jewish evilness is bred in the Jewish genome, there is no solution but expulsion, conflict, restriction of Jewish rights, homicide, or genocide. The Jew is hopeless, at the least; we must separate ourselves from him. The Christian and Muslim points of view see the Jewish religion as the source of these behaviors, hence, conversion to Christianity or Islam is sufficient to redeem and purify the Jew of his objectionable Jewish characteristics. All of these explanations are interesting, some are just wrong, and most have elements of truth in them somewhere, but none of them seem sufficient to explain the behaviors described above. Look at those characteristics – extreme vengefulness, vindictiveness, Manichean mindset, hypersensitivity to criticism, us and them mindset, obsession with enemies, provocation of enemies, need for victimhood and desire to humiliate the crushed enemy. Careful, thoughtful analysis shows us that those are characteristics of human tribalism, clannishness or ethnocentrism (same thing). Note: Not Jewish tribalism, but human tribalism. This is an important point to make, since so much anti-Semitism seeks to make the Jew appear non-human. The tribalism of Jews, the most extreme tribalism of any human ethnic group, is simply human tribalism, and these “Jewish” behaviors can easily be revealed as human behaviors once we open our minds and try to see these same qualities in non-Jews. The purpose of this little excursion into Jewish history and psychology is to shed some light on so many things about this Iraq War that seem to defy understanding. If we plug our new found understanding of Jewish hypertribalism into the largely Jewish neoconservative movement, more and more lights wink on and things seem even clearer. When we recognize that the (largely Jewish) neoconservative War on Terror battle plan has nothing to do with spreading democracy, the blurred lines get even clearer. Off the record, many neoconservatives have admitted that the purpose of the War on Terror is simply a war on the Islamic religion. In order to set off this war, neoconservatives seek to do precisely those things that are designed to humiliate and infuriate the Muslims most of all. In off-record comments, neocons have admitted that what they really desire is not democracy but the radicalization of the Islamic World. Why would anyone want something so counterproductive? In order to “smack the hornet’s nest”, to “get the enemies to show us their true colors”, and to “get the enemies out in the open where we can destroy them” – that’s why. At the moment, most Islamic countries cannot be attacked by the neocons, because Islamic hostility to the US and Israel, officially anyway, is somewhat hidden. The neocons hope that by radicalizing the world’s Muslims, Muslims will be turned into a worthy, evil target that the neocons will be justified in attacking. In the same fashion, Israel undermined the PLO and promoted Hamas in order to give the enemy an evil face and weaken the more moderate PLO, whose relative moderation threatened to gather world support. The neocons hope this provocation will set off a religious war of the West, or really the Jews and whatever Christian and maybe Hindu allies the Jews can round up, versus the radicalized, evil Muslims. I know that sounds insane, but bear with me. The neocons realize that this will be a long, hard, drawn-out war, but they make the analogy of the Cold War. The war against Islam will last for maybe 40 years, the neocons figure, but they assume that, like the Cold War, the West will come out on top. In the end, Islam will be defeated and the Islamic religion will be transformed into a neutered, harmless version of itself. Once we recognize the outlines of the neocon conspiracy and trace its roots to Jewish ultratribalist psychology and history, so many things start making sense. Shoving Jay Garner, the arch-Zionist general from JINSA, down Iraq’s throat. Desecration of the Koran – stomping on it, tossing it in the toilet. For Muslim POW’s – forced nudity, nude human pyramids, exposure to dogs, blasting with “immoral” rock music, forcing Muslim women to undress, forced eating of pork, forced watching of US jailers having sex. The outrageous new Iraqi flag that looks suspiciously like the Israeli flag. Having a US Jewish Zionist run the new Occupation regime’s radio network (Norman Pattiz’s Radio Sawa). The deliberate US plot to wipe out of Iraq’s cultural history and infrastructure. Sending an uber-Zionist neocon (Negroponte) to Iraq as an ambassador. Attempts to force Iraq to recognize Israel or sign a peace treaty with Israel. The delighted, repeated, floating in the media of the Israeli plan to rebuild a pipeline from Kirkuk, Iraq to Haifa, Israel. Major construction of 14 permanent US military bases in Iraq, whether the Iraqis want them or not. Outrageous plans to turn over most of Iraq’s public property to rich foreign investors and wipe out most Iraqi private businesses, all at once. Loud plans to privatize Iraq’s oil industry. The loud demands of the expatriate Iraqi Jews to be compensated for the money and property left when they were evicted from Iraq so long ago. Sending a super-Zionist Jew, Zoellick, to Iraq on frequent, in your face, junkets to Iraq. The deliberate destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, so it can be rebuilt at maximum cost by US companies. The destruction of the Michael Aflaq (a founder of the Baath Party) statue in Baghdad. The faked humiliating capture of Saddam Hussein in a spiderhole, when he was actually caught in a firefight with US and Kurdish forces, defending himself with a pistol, 2 days before. The humiliation of a US Army doctor searching Saddam for lice. The deliberate opening of the uberZionist Mossad office, MEMRI, right in the heart of Baghdad. The smashing up the Palestinian Embassy in Baghdad and the arrests of Palestinian diplomats, for no apparent reason, by US troops. The flooding of Iraq with mismarked Israeli products, camouflaged and marked by treasonous Jordanian partners – the mentality is – we will force the Iraqis to buy Israeli products. The deliberate US bombing of mosques, the outrageous attack on the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and on and on. The reason for all of these baffling, seemingly counterproductive US-Zionist behaviors becomes crystal clear when we see their genesis in Jewish hypertribal thinking and the related neocon efforts to provoke the Islamic World into a World War 3, so the Muslims can be beaten once and for all. Now, moving on, what of Zoellick’s charges? They are deeply problematic. First of all, Syria has caught more jihadis trying to cross into Iraq than Jordan or Saudi Arabia combined. The Saudis support, at least ideologically, the Sunni Salafists, who play such a major role in the insurgency. Jordan, while hostile to Salafism, has a majority fundamentalist Parliament, and is strongly Sunni chauvinist. If you go to downtown Amman, you find it crowded with Iraqis, many of them Sunni refugees of Saddam’s regime. Many of these people have links to the Sunni insurgency. These Sunni Baathists do not bother to conceal their utter delight in the chaos caused by the Iraqi insurgency; such is their furious hatred of the present Shia regime. Indeed, most every Arab Sunni state is so terrified of the Shia government in Iraq that they are surely rooting for the Sunni insurgency. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have done little or nothing to stop guerrillas crossing into Iraq. There are 2,500 Saudis in Iraq now, and they get official sanction and approval from state preachers. By contrast, the Syrian regime is a Shia Alawi regime. In fact, Alawis are a minority, very divergent Shia sect who have been treated like little more than slaves by their Sunni neighbors for centuries. Highly secular, the Alawis have long had to constantly ward off accusations of not being Muslims, or of being apostates. It would seem the Syrian regime would have little reason to support Sunni fundamentalism. In fact, of all the nearby Arab nations, Syria has been by far the most hostile to Sunni Salafism. The Syrian government attack on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Salafists in the city of Hama in 1982 killed some 20,000 residents. Syrian prisons are full of Sunni fundamentalists, and the Syrian regime is the most secular Muslim regime in the region. Further, the Syrians have arrested quite a few jihadis trying to head into Iraq, as opposed to Jordan or Saudi Arabia, who have arrested few or none. On the other hand, the Zionist-dominated US is intent on overthrowing the Syrian government, and, conversely, the US government is not conspiring to overthrow any other Arab government, including the Saudis or the Jordanians. In addition, part of the neocon conspiracy is to use the US base in Iraq to attack surrounding regimes, especially defiant Iran and Syria. Therefore, the Syrians have exactly zero reason to cooperate with the US in keeping guerrillas out of Iraq, since they get nothing in return, and since the US troops in Iraq are a major, demonstrable threat to the nation of Syria. The reasons for all of this finger-pointing at Syria, while ignoring, say, the Wahhabi regime in Arabia, are obvious. The Occupation of Iraq, on balance, looks pretty bad. The neocon plan was to overthrow the Iraqi regime quickly and then give Iraq a US-Zionist makeover as some sort of a spearhead to redraw the map of the Middle East and force major culture and political change in the region. Instead, Iraq is a catastrophe; a horrible, chaotic mess, a failed state torn apart by the most savage Arab insurgency in decades. When humans are stuck in a lousy situation, they tend to blame others; it’s a classic defensive psychological reaction. Rather than admit that many of the Iraqi people are in open revolt against the US Occupiers and what they as their Iraqi lackeys, the neocons have come up with a new theory. The theory is that all of the mess in Iraq is due to the existence of the Iranian and especially the Syrian regimes, who, alone, are creating the insurgency and wreaking havoc on the peaceful, lovable, Occupation-loving, Judeophilic, Zionist-enamored Iraqi people, who are just dying to become the 51st state of the US and sign a peace treaty with Israel. This laughably dishonest theory, reeking with psychological defense, is quite useful: it gives the neocons an excellent reason to try to overthrow, one way or another, Iran and Syria, who are the last two state enemies of Israel. The theory is: as long as the Syrian and Iranian regimes are not overthrown, the Iraqi insurgency will rage on. These accusations are simply part of the propaganda campaign being waged as part of a US-Israeli conspiracy to overthrow the defiant governments of Iran and Syria. This research takes a lot of time, and I do not get paid anything for it. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a a contribution to support more of this valuable research.

Bad Place to Visit, Wouldn't Want To Live There

Repost from the old site. This article has produced a tremendous amount of controversy, angry comments, and even, oddly enough, virulent hate mail. I guess I hit some raw nerves. I stand by my comments that these cities are some of the worst in the world, and, in doing further research on the Net, have found only further support for my thesis. Some of these cities, such as Bogotá, for instance, have large wealthy districts that are apparently quite pleasant. If one is rich, one can make a nice life just about anywhere on the globe. But this is not important – what is important is how the majority live. The title is a play on the line, “Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there”, said about many less-than-desirable tourist locales. This post is about the worst places on Earth to visit, and probably to live too. The ratings were based on research done on the Internet in various places, including here and here. I’m going to focus on the places that are dirty, smelly, crime-ridden, trashy, rip-off havens, unsanitary and dangerous (Third World), and avoid places that are merely depressing, unsightly, rude, etc. (First World). Why? Because I live in the US, and those Third World qualities are going to be the most disturbing to me. I’m also avoiding active war zones because everyone knows they are horrible. To be fair to the “Third Worldists” out there, I noted that many people slammed various places in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, South Korea, Ireland Italy, the US, Great Britain and Australia for various reasons, mostly because they are said to be unfriendly, depressing, tacky, cheesy, boring, etc. Detroit seemed to top the list as worst US city, along with Newark (though it had one fan), East St. Louis and New Haven (though some liked New Haven) were runners-up. Various small towns in the Rockies (especially Idaho) and Texas also were listed. For some reason, a lot of people hate Vancouver, BC in Canada. To my thinking, many of the horrible cities below point out the catastrophe of Latin American, Indian, Indonesian and Philippine capitalism. In much of Africa, capitalism doesn’t seem to working very well. For all its faults, impoverished Cuba certainly does not resemble any of these Latin American hellholes in any way, shape or form. I don’t think that capitalism in the First World is failing, but looking at many of the cities below, it’s hard to argue that capitalism is doing anything but failing in those places. Some of the winners in the Loser Destination Contest: Colon, Panama: A dirty, crime-ridden disaster of a city. The most dangerous city in Latin America, full of residents who seem like they would just as soon knife you as say hello. Other than the free trade zone, the entire city seems to be sprawling slum. Colon has no redeeming qualities. This city topped many worst lists. Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador: Guayaquil is horrible. A stinking, steaming, downright dangerous heap of a city with miles of slums. With armies of glowering gang members, this place is dangerous even in mid-day. There are garbage dumps everywhere with corpses laying out in plain sight and guns going off all the time. Quito is similar. Guayaquil topped many worst city lists. Johannesburg, South Africa: How sad that this country now has one of the worst violent crime rates on Earth. Although popular with tourists, this city is downright dangerous. This city also topped many worst lists. This blog supports the Mandela government, but the problems of this tragic nation seem insurmountable. ***** Lagos, Nigeria, or the whole country: This city, and even the whole country, seems to top everyone’s list. Garbage is everywhere, the city stinks, the poverty is horrible, animals are slaughtered on the streets, and it seems that at least half the population wakes up every morning thinking, “Who can I rip off today?” Up to 9 Nigeria has what must be the worst government on Earth and the country is rated the second most corrupt on Earth. The national airlines are dangerous and not recommended. The ripoff attempts often start as soon as you land at the airport and won’t let up until you leave. It’s best to assume that most, if not all, Nigerians you meet in Lagos are out to rip you off in some way or another and then proceed from there. The city is full of impostors, and you really do not know if anyone is really who they say they are. The police and Customs officials are all crooks and so is 9 Most bank and post office employees are also crooked. Imagine waiting in line at the post office, and a group of swaggering gangsters with fake ID’s strut in to pick up their stolen goods reshipped from overseas. They go straight to the front of the line ahead of everyone else, pick up their stolen property, and walk away laughing, having paid off the Post Office clerks. Welcome to Nigeria. There are Internet cafes all over the city, where 150,000 full-time Internet scammers ply their trade in plain view of anyone to see, and the government doesn’t bat an eye or lift one finger to stop them. In many cafes, 8 The scammers started out with the famous 419 email scams but have now branched out into lottery, romance, auction, roommate, orphanage and check-cashing scams. The scams are continuously evolving, and Nigerian con artists are widely acknowledged to be some of the best in the world, as they have been practicing the art for decades now. On highways outside of Lagos, you can see numerous vehicles wrecked on the side of the road, or even in the middle of the road, some with dead bodies still in them or beside them. Thieves pick through the wreckage and rifle the corpses looking for stuff to steal. All of the roads are dangerous, as armed robbers often set up roadblocks to shake down travelers. Nigeria is now a world center for counterfeit pharmaceuticals, credit card fraud and drug dealing, and a district of Lagos, Oluwole, is now a world center for top-notch forgery. The FBI and the US Merchant Risk Council recently came to Nigeria and inspected 40 packages coming into the country from the US to check for stolen goods. 39 of the 40 packages contained stolen property. When the agents arrived at a Lagos neighborhood and tried to arrest an 18-year-old boy for reshipping scams that targeted US merchants, much of the neighborhood – up to 100 people – rushed out of their homes to defend the local punk from Big Bad Whitey. Although the country is awash in oil, the power goes out all the time because the government power company is so crooked. The power company has either stolen all of its own budget money or the power comes in, but the crooked company resells it on the side. As with elsewhere in Africa, Whitey is blamed for all the troubles here. Hatred of Whitey is higher in Nigeria than in much of the rest of Black Africa and the White visitor will definitely feel it. The degeneration of Nigerian society is complete, and the culture appears near collapse. Mobs lynch thieves in the street and kill them in public for as meager a crime as stealing a cellphone, yet crime rages on anyway. Anyone can just up and say they own your house, put it on the market and sell it and you are out a house. Law enforcement, courts and anything resembling government seem to be nonexistent. ****** ****** Lima, Peru: When they tell you to visit Peru, they don’t mean the nightmarish capital. There are teeming slums as far as the eye can see, horrible crime (although not a lot of violent crime), pickpockets everywhere, and on top of all that, the sun never comes out. The fog mixes with the smog and the filthy streets to make a toxic brew. Lima made many worst lists. But it has its fans, and the upscale Miraflores district is said to be nice. The execrable Shining Path took up their nihilistic, deranged war in this country for a reason – because Peru is a rotten heap of a country. ****** ****** Medan (Sumatra), Jakarta, Surabaya, Indonesia: Jakarta is a reeking city with terrible pollution, open sewers and wrenching poverty. Medan seemed to top many lists for worst city on Earth, though it has a few fans. It’s hot, dirty and polluted, with factories, thieves and leering, menacing men everywhere. There is also nowhere to stay, not that you would want to stay anyway. Besides Medan, the rest of Sumatra is much better. The river running through Surabaya is so polluted you might vomit walking across the bridge. As you suppress your gag reflex, you will look down and notice that people are actually washing their clothes in this river. ***** ***** Mumbai, Patna (Bihar), Calcutta, all large Indian cities, India: Indian cities are very dirty and teeming with some of the most miserably poor and wretched people you will ever see, but at least there is not a lot of crime. The Hindu religion keeps crime down because believers fear they will be punished by returning in the next life as something terrible, like one of the huge rats you see scurrying about. Mumbai has pollution that is so bad that people actually get lung cancer from breathing the air. Mumbai, a stinking and sometimes dangerous city, made many worst city lists. Patna is the sorry capital of Bihar, the poorest state in India. It’s dirty and miserable, and it’s almost impossible to even get a taxi to get you out of town, which means it’s hard to leave the place. Calcutta is generally agreed to be one of the worst cities in India. ***** Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang, China: Deadly pollution, mostly from coal. Bucharest, all of Romania: Stalinist pollution covers the whole country and everyone seems depressed. Bali (in particular Kuta Beach), Indonesia: Hopes so high, reality so low. It seems everyone is out to rip you off. Surly locals hungry for money. Dangerous roads, nightmarish traffic, rude, leering men. When it rains, the sewers flood into the streets. Very high crime rate, hustlers everywhere. Most of the rest of Indonesia is pretty nice. Kuta is a tourist trap gone to Hell. **** Manila, Philippines: A crime-ridden hellhole. There are armed guards everywhere, especially in front of banks due to constant bank robberies. Their nemeses, criminal gangs armed to the teeth, roam streets filled with prostitutes and transvestites. It’s a town where everyone seems like they are out to rip you off in one way or other, and the hotel workers and cab drivers are all crooked. The latest advice is to have your Filipino friend meet you at the airport and head straight to their place, thereby avoiding all the ripoffs and con artists that seem to descend on every tourist. Traffic is horrible, and pollution is so bad it kills people. But some people don’t mind it. **** Gdansk, Poland: Combine a high crime rate and daylight robberies with totally crooked, thieving officials, and you get this Polish city. However, a number of others said it’s just fine. **** Mexico City, Villahermosa, Mexico: Mexico City is a dirty, polluted city suffering an insane, surreal epidemic of street crime, especially violent crime. Add 20 million people, stir well, bring to a boil, cover with a lid of otherworldly smog, and simmer. Reportedly, tons of human waste are blown into the air every day, and much of the population has constant respiratory infections. The sewer system is reportedly above ground and more or less runs through lots of neighborhoods where many people are residing. Villahermosa is a Mad Max-style, violent, crime-ridden disgrace of a city. There are stabbings and shootings galore here, even with a 10 PM curfew in place. ***** Tangier, Morocco: This is a dangerous place with lots of street crime. That’s unusual for a North African country, but Tangier is so close to Europe that it is almost a part of Europe. ***** Cairo, Egypt: Cairo has horrible pollution, smells terrible, there is trash everywhere, nothing works, there are armies of miserably poor people and it boasts some outrageously awful traffic. In the souks there are huge rats and wild, mangy scavenging dogs running about in plain sight. There seems no escape from aggressive, pestering hawkers. On top of all that, all the Customs officials are criminals. The crime rate is fairly low, though. Thank President Hosni Mubarak. 25 years ago, Cairo was one of the great world cities. ***** Bangkok, Thailand: This gigantic city has pollution so bad you need to wear a mask over your face. However, some folks like this city and say it has many positive attributes. ***** Brindisi, Naples, Italy: No one seems to like Brindisi. It’s a sad, dirty, polluted and ugly city, with hostile, brawling, drunken locals, hungry stray dogs, belligerent drivers, horrible traffic, and miles of soul-killing tenements. You would think that despite all of that, being genuine Italians, they could still manage to make a decent pizza. Forget it: even the pizza is terrible. Brindisi topped many worst lists, although it has a couple of fans. I had never even heard of Brindisi and had to look it up on a map. It’s located in southern Italy on the East Coast, southeast of Naples. Naples has a great deal of crime, and many think this city is overrated as a tourist destination, although others say that, despite the drawbacks, it has its joys. All of southern Italy has a lot of crime, but it’s mostly property crime. ***** ***** Athens, Piraeus, or the whole country, Greece: Greece, especially Athens, gets mixed reviews. A lot of people really hate Athens; others don’t. The detractors say the city is dirty, ugly, depressing, polluted, and covered with garbage and traffic. I was surprised that Athens made the list, as I had always thought it was a wonderful city. The port city of Piraeus is a nasty place. The whole city smells like a giant sewage treatment plant, and the ocean offshore has a sickening color to it. ***** **** Suburbs of Paris, France: These tragic towns, full of hostile Arab immigrants angrily refusing to assimilate to French culture or join French society, are a sign that the French model is not working well, at least for some folks. There is a terribly high crime rate here, and cops and firemen often won’t go there because they get attacked as soon as they show up. These mournful towns are packed with angry, unemployed young Arab men who like to seriously riot every year or so, or even more often if the mood strikes them. Lately, they have been staging mini-riots every night. If only 100 cars are burned, that’s a good night. Otherwise, Paris, of course, is one of the world’s great cities. But that doesn’t mean you might not walk into a subway station reeking of urine and see junkies shooting up in plain sight. But still, Paris is a must on any serious travelers’ list. ****** Brussels, Belgium: As with Paris, the districts with many Arab immigrants are quite dangerous and unpleasant, but the rest of the city is as nice as any big city. Abidjan, Ivory Coast: With one of the worst crime rates in Africa (although it has plenty of competition), this city topped many worst lists. ***** Bangui, Central African Republic: One of the worst cities in Africa, as bad as Lagos. The crime rate is totally insane. The locals will try to steal everything you own and even a contingent of armed guards will not be enough to protect you. Your hotel room will feel like a war zone. This fiendish city made a number of worst city lists. Lonely Planet’s guidebook more or less tells you to avoid this city altogether. Here is a harrowing report of a visit to Bangui. ***** Bamako, Mali: Mali has one of the worst governments in Africa, admittedly a race with a lot of competition. Bamako is a sick joke of a town, where the tourist surcharge is rigorously enforced, and the ridiculous, potholed streets are undriveable by any vehicle. Guatemala City, Guatemala: A totally dangerous, dirty, polluted, terminal patient of a city, full of scary, heavily armed teenage soldiers. The soldiers are there to keep the teeming, crime-ridden slums that stretch as far as the eye can see, from overrunning the place. But this city has a few fans. Belize City, Belize: This sweltering, miserable, impoverished, crime-ridden, very dangerous city is built on a swamp, with a jungle for a backyard. The beggars are aggressive and even menacing, and shady characters shadow you on the streets as you walk about. Cops are nowhere to be seen. This is one of the worst cities in the Americas. But the rest of the country is a great place to vacation. ***** Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Sao Paulo is the industrial engine of Brazil. This major city is full of garbage and very dangerous. There are hustlers as far as the eye can see, chaotic streets that render maps useless, not enough cops and Godawful traffic. Rio de Janeiro, the popular tourist destination with the killer skyline perfect for any postcard, is a deceptive place. It’s a very dangerous city with lots of violent crime. Street gangs armed to the teeth regularly shoot it out in military-style wars with the cops. Death squads of off-duty cops funded by local businessmen roam the streets at night, murdering homeless, drug-addicted street kids and petty criminals with impunity in a sickening “social cleanup” campaign. There are pickpockets and muggers all about, often in menacing, youthful gangs (especially on the famous beach) and they frequently operate in broad daylight. A dystopian horrorshow of a city. ****** Nairobi, Kenya: Unfortunately, this city is seriously crime-ridden. Even locals admit that violent crime has reached catastrophic proportions. Caracas, Barquisimeto, or the whole country, Venezuela: The crime is very bad here, sadly, and there is garbage everywhere you look. This blog supports Hugo Chavez, but crime in Venezuela is a tragic, long-standing problem with no quick fixes. Guinea-Bissau: There is no water, no electricity, no place to stay, and the only hotel is half-demolished. San‘a’, Yemen: In a Dickensenian touch, children are actually chained up here in order to beg! Moynaq and Nukus, Uzbekistan: These two cities broiling in a merciless desert have been ruined and turned into ecological dead zones by Stalinist pollution. ***** San Pedro Sulu, Honduras: This sad town has a horrible amount of crime. Swarms of locals will attack you on the bus, trying to steal your luggage. You will have to fight them off if you wish to retain your suitcase. Like the rest of this wreck of a country, it’s full of US gang members gone home to Honduras. People here are very poor and desperate. If you can make it to the nice part of town and afford to stay there, though, you can be quite safe. ***** ***** Dakar, Senegal: According to some, this large West African city has horrible street crime – it is very dangerous. They say if you don’t have armed guards with you, don’t even go outside your hotel room. However, others report that they spent a week there and found it to be safe, in fact safer than many American cities. Violent crime is reportedly rare, and the country is one of the most stable in Africa, and has been that way since independence. ***** Port Au Prince, Haiti: This filthy, degraded, extremely dangerous and desperately poor mess of a city is best avoided at all costs. It sports open sewers, enslaved children, riots, killings and lots of other fun things. This blog did support President Aristide’s efforts to improve the tragedy of a nation called Haiti. Lome, Togo: Criminals are as common as mosquitoes here, walking around fearlessly in broad daylight in this terrible city full of miserable people and crooked taxi drivers. ***** Istanbul, Turkey: The 20 The rest of the country is a great place to visit, has many fans and is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Best bet for Turkey is just to head to the tourist spots and blow off Istanbul altogether. ***** Phnom Penh, Kampuchea: This city has become a very dangerous, crime-ridden place. The gangs of little girl prostitutes add a particularly poignant touch. ***** Bogotá, Colombia or really the whole country: Bogotá is one of the most dangerous places in the Americas but there seems to be agreement that Colon, Lima and Guayaquil are worse. Really, all of Colombia is dangerous as Hell, to be honest. This comment about Bogotá was recently rebutted by a Bogotán blogger, with more comments here. His post aggressively taking issue with this entry is in Spanish, but my Spanish is good enough to get the gist of it. Also I am getting a lot of comments coming in from Bogotáns on the Internet aggressively objecting to the content. The sole issue that these Defenders of Bogotá are taking issue with is my contention that the city is a very dangerous place. To be honest, Bogotá used to have a truly horrible reputation for crime, but in recent years, there has been a huge effort put into cracking down on street crime. For some more agreement that Bogota is dangerous, see Bogotá is scopolamine. This drug is used by crooks to disable their victims so they can rip them off. It is sprayed in the face, dumped in your drink or spiked into a cigarette. Bogotá hospitals receive an incredible 2,000 scopolamine victims every month, or an astounding 66 a day. The drug knocks you out and can cause medical problems. Colombia has one of the world’s worst road systems. Many roads are not even marked. Drivers are reckless and many cars don’t have headlights at night. Cows have a tendency to wander into the road. Taxis are totally dangerous and are best avoided, if possible. Women are advised to avoid all taxis at night. Anyone is advised to avoid any taxi that already has someone in it. In many cases, this is a criminal accomplice of the thuggish driver. In addition to getting scopolamine sprayed in your face, another popular scam is the “jump-start”: you are told that the taxi has stalled and asked to get out and help push. As you do so, the taxi driver leaves with your luggage. Buses are also best avoided. Thieves haunt the buses, waiting for you to fall asleep, at which point, they rip you off. Certain bus lines are frequented by thieves offering drugged gum, sweets, food and cigarettes. After the drug knocks you out, they rob you blind. In addition to theft and druggings, kidnapping and extortion are also rife on buses. In view of all of the above, it is nothing short of amazing that all of these Colombians are angrily protesting my characterization of their country as dangerous. Or perhaps they doth protest too much? ***** Managua, Nicaragua: This dirty, crime-ridden, dangerous disaster of a city has a bombed-out look about it. This blog supports Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista Party and prays that they can ameliorate this mess. ***** San Salvador, El Salvador: See Managua. Full of dangerous former LA gang members. Death squads roam the streets, slaughtering gangsters by the dozen, but for every one you kill, it seems five more pop up in his place. This blog supports the FMLN’s efforts to reform this ruined land, but the crime here has become so terrible, one wonders if anything short of an act of God could make things better. In fact, I used to make contributions too the FMLN’s weapons fund via an FMLN agent in Los Angeles during the 1980’s. ***** ***** Detroit, New Haven, Newark, Gary (Indiana), Hammond (Indiana), USA: Detroit topped all lists as the worst city in the US. An ugly, dangerous, depressing and filthy city with a downtown that looks like a war zone – a despairing district surrounded by miles of crumbling, abandoned industrial buildings, torn-down fences and rusting cars. Newark is similar, with few to no redeeming qualities. It’s a frightening, polluted city with a postwar look of miles of weedy, trash-strewn vacant lots where crumbling apartment buildings have been torn down. It’s also a dangerous city with a high crime rate. New Haven, despite the presence of Yale University, is similar. There are legions of homeless, begging drug users clogging the streets, and the crime rate is very high due to hordes of crack-dealing gangs shooting it out on the streets. Congress and Columbus Avenues are notorious for drive-by shootings, drug dealing and muggings. It is reportedly the HIV capital of the East Coast due to IV drug use. A lot of the more respectable people have been moving out for some time now. Although much of the city is quite ugly, New Haven does have its bright spots, thanks to Yale. There are nice parts of town, parks, trees, etc. Gary is yet another postindustrial Rust Belt train wreck of a town. A grimy town full of abandoned factories, overgrown lots, rusting fences, graffiti, barred windows and vomit. Go downtown and see tall buildings all boarded up, with no vehicles in sight and unhinged stoplights swaying in the wind – for all practical purposes, a ghost town. This was once a vibrant, working-class city, and now it looks like Road Warrior. Hammond is similar, a suicidally depressing city lined with shuttered factories on the shores of Lake Michigan. Yet another Rust Belt post-industrial ruin. ***** Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: A collapsing, dirty, crime-ridden hellhole. Osaka, Japan: I never would have thought that this city would make the list but according to my friend Tumerica, she says it is the worst city she has ever lived in. I tagged her with the title of this story. In blogging, tagging mean you are supposed to write on the topic – kind of like, “Tag, you’re it.” I will let her explain why Osaka is such a crappy place in her post here.

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